Matrilineal: Prodigal
by Em Meredith
Summary: I wouldn’t confide in the Prodigal Son. The die has been cast, the battle is won. Eleventh in the Matrilineal series.


TITLE: Prodigal AUTHOR: Em Meredith SPOILERS: General season 2. Incorporates canon up until about Countdown. SUMMARY: I wouldn't confide in the Prodigal Son. The die has been cast, the battle is won. Eleventh in the Matrilineal series. DISCLAIMER: JJ Abrams owns these characters. He's got legal, officially sanctioned ways of torturing them. I do what I can while he's on vacation. Summary lyric is from Fretless, copyright Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe. DISTRIBUTION: Cover Me. This fic and all previous installments live at our site (). AUTHOR'S NOTES: We've reached the home stretch. God willing. ;-) Thanks to kate, for liking even the draft-y version, and to austin, for harassing me about this. Macha, as always-- you gravel, baybee.  
  
Prodigal By Em Meredith  
  
When it happens, it's almost an anticlimax.  
  
Sydney's spent years planning how it will all end. In a perfect world, it will be a clean capture, and Sloane will see a prison cell and many interrogation rooms. Not only will she and Jane be safe, but Sloane's removal will lead to the capture of other high-profile black market operatives. She's realistic, though, knowing that's not how it will happen, but mostly she just wants to avoid the nightmare scenarios -- she's imagined bombs and SWAT teams and Sloane's body riddled with bullets. In her nightmares she's seen Vaughn shot and killed in the crossfire, her father captured and tortured, and Jane kidnapped. It always ends explosively, with Sydney where she needs to be -- in the thick of things, protecting her daughter and her family.  
  
She never imagined she'd be in the living room of her father's safehouse, arguing with Weiss about flying to Cozumel. She balances Jane on one hip and haphazardly tosses toys into the pale green diaper bag with the other.  
  
"Syd," Weiss reasons, "you can't take the baby on another trip. You're going to have to just wait while other people--"  
  
"I can't do anything from here. I'm not going to let the trail get cold." She vents her frustration on Jane's tiny stuffed clown, throwing it in the diaper bag with far more force than is necessary. Jane reaches out after it, looking confused at the way her mother is treating her toys. Noticing her expression, Sydney tries to calm down so she won't upset Jane.  
  
Weiss takes a deep breath and Sydney can tell that he's trying not to lose his temper either. "We don't know if he's even in Cozumel anymore," He points out, hid voice carefully neutral. "The CIA has plenty of field agents who can investigate this."  
  
"I'm not going to sit around and do nothing!"  
  
"You won't be," he smirks. "Welcome to the world of the desk agent."  
  
"Dammit, Weiss--" Sydney breaks off suddenly at the sound of a car outside. Weiss brushed his coat back, snags his gun, and heads for the front of the house. She disentangles Jane, who's suddenly clingy, and puts her on the couch, hopefully out of the line of fire. Sydney swears softly at the precious seconds she's losing while she tries to keep Jane quiet and grabs her gun out of the diaper bag, sending Pampers flying in the process.  
  
"It's okay," Weiss calls from the living room. "It's your father."  
  
Sydney tells herself to relax and kneels in front of Jane, smoothing her daughter's hair back. When Jane stops looking as if she's about to burst into tears, Sydney begins to straighten up the mess she's just made, placing her gun on the mantle. She hears the low murmur of voices in the other room and she pushes aside the sense of foreboding that's nagging at her. She focuses instead on lining up the diapers and wipes, giving Jane the stuffed clown to play with so that she'll stop trying to undo Sydney's organization.  
  
Sydney looks up as Jack and Weiss enter the room, matching somber expressions in place. When her father says her name in a gentle voice, she knows for sure that something's happened. The panic claws at her chest and she can't breathe, thinking that if her father's using that tone of voice, Vaughn must be dead.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
He reaches out and puts a gentle hand on her shoulder, which frightens her more than anything she saw on his face.  
  
"Sydney, it's over. Sloane's dead."  
  
Her instinctive relief at finally hearing those words doesn't quite quell the panic. "And Vaughn?"  
  
"Vaughn's fine," Jack answers, jaw tight. "He's in debrief with Kendall right now."  
  
The relief floods through her and she sinks down onto the couch, upsetting Jane's precarious balance. Jane tilts sideways, falling face down into her mother's lap, and Sydney gathers her up before she can protest. Sydney holds her daughter close, ignoring Jane's best efforts to squirm out of her arms.  
  
Finally, Sydney manages to ask what happened. Her father and Weiss exchange a look, and Weiss takes Jane from her, mumbling something about naptime as he takes her into the other room. Jack's face, meanwhile, takes on the pinched look Sydney associates with anger toward Irina Derevko.  
  
"Your mother shot Sloane in the forehead at point blank range."  
  
It takes her a minute to process this. "She did what?" In spite of her mother's sordid past, Sydney still has trouble picturing Irina as a cold- blooded murderer. She'd wanted to believe that her mother had reformed, despite her escape.  
  
"Apparently Agent Vaughn was under the naïve impression that she was going to release Sloane into CIA custody." Jack pauses, and Sydney's not sure what to make of his expression-- he seems almost pleased. "Irina obviously had other plans."  
  
"So she just murdered him?"  
  
"Sydney, Irina Derevko might not be who you'd have wanted for a mother, but she'd do anything to protect you. And while I disagree with her methods, I can understand wanting to keep you safe at any cost. I'm sure that as a parent yourself now, you can relate to that."  
  
"But did she even try to find another way to take him down?"  
  
"I don't have all the details yet. I'm sure Agent Vaughn can fill you in when you go in for *your* debrief," he says pointedly.  
  
Sydney leans back, closing her eyes. She briefly considers running again-- anything to avoid the confrontation with Kendall. And Vaughn-- she can't even begin to imagine what she will say to him. For so long she's focused on being free of Sloane, on keeping her daughter safe. However mush she disagrees with her mother's methods, that threat has been removed. Now comes the hard part. Now she'll have to justify all the choices she's made to get to this point.  
  
"Okay," she says, trying to sound braver than she actually feels. She opens her eyes, stands up, and zips the diaper bag shut. "Let's go."  
  
--------  
  
The good thing about being on the run, Sydney muses, was that at least she hadn't had to fill out any paperwork. Unfortunately, now she seems to be making up for that tenfold, filling out forms and writing her statement.  
  
She's taken over Weiss' desk while he and Jack are answering to Devlin. Before he left, Weiss dragged over an extra chair for Jane's baby seat from Vaughn's desk. Sydney noticed that the desk was immaculate, a half-empty coffee cup the only sign that Vaughn had been there. On their way in, she'd watched the closed door of the conference room, knowing Vaughn was inside. She tries not to think about how close he is. She forces herself to wait until he's done, although part of her wants to rush in an interrupt Kendall.  
  
Her daughter's spent the past half hour chewing contentedly on her stuffed clown while Sydney's scribbled away, but Jane's decided she wants some attention. Jane lobs her clown in the direction of her inattentive mother and starts fussing.  
  
Sydney sets her pen down, stretching her fingers to ward off cramping. She turns, unbuckling Jane and lifting her daughter onto her lap. Sydney rescues the clown from the floor and places it back in Jane's eager hands.  
  
Sydney feels Vaughn's intense gaze on her before she sees him. When she looks up, he's standing on the far side of the room. He's dressed differently than she expects, in a t-shirt and khaki shorts instead of one of his well-tailored suits. But he still looks the same, despite the shadows under his eyes. He looks like he's been through hell, but she's never been so glad to see him.  
  
He doesn't, however, look as if he's at all glad to see *her.*  
  
He's too far away and he's not making any moves to come closer. She takes a deep breath, wishing she could read his expression better. She repositions Jane on her hip and stands, crossing the room to meet him. She thinks she should probably plan what she's going to say to him, but she's concentrating on carrying Jane despite her unsteady legs. It feels like it's taking her forever to cross the room, but Vaughn makes no move to meet her halfway.  
  
By the time Sydney reaches him, he's stopped looking at her altogether, his gaze focused on Jane with such wonder that it makes Sydney's heart ache.  
  
She's been writing page after page of details for Kendall, describing everything that's happened over the past year, everything that she's done to get to this point. She's written about the time she thinks she was followed to the doctor and the precautions she took when she went into labor. She's spilled hundreds of words onto the page, but here with Vaughn she finds that she has no words that will justify or explain, so she decides to start simply.  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
He doesn't answer, doesn't even look up, but he nods in acknowledgement, and she sees his Adam's apple bob. He reaches out hesitantly, tracing the soft curve of Jane's cheek as she stares back curiously.  
  
"Thank you," she tells him.  
  
His head snaps up, eyes accusing. "Your mother did the dirty work."  
  
"Well, thank you anyway."  
  
He nods tersely.  
  
Sydney wishes for something-- anything-- to cut the tension. "Do you want-- why don't you hold her?"  
  
For a moment she thinks he's going to say something bitter, but Vaughn merely holds his hands out, ready to take Jane. Jane hasn't decided what to make of him and she jerks away, clinging to Sydney and fussing again.  
  
Sydney closes her eyes, wishing that Jane would somehow just *know* that Vaughn was her father. That she'd have some sort of sixth sense that would make her leap into his arms, rather than the display of third-generation paranoia she is currently exhibiting.  
  
"I'm sorry," Sydney sighs, opening her eyes and trying to avoid the hurt in his eyes. "She's shy around --" Sydney stops short, but Vaughn finished the sentence for her.  
  
"Strangers?" He laughs, but it's a bitter sound. "And whose fault is it that I'm a stranger?"  
  
Sydney's never been particularly even-tempered to begin with, and she's just as tired and cranky as Jane.  
  
"You know, Vaughn," she snaps, "Maybe you could--" but she's cut off by Jane, who chooses that moment to let loose a loud wail that echoes off the walls of the Ops Center and turns the heads of the few agents working late at their desks.  
  
Sydney bounces Jane slightly, patting her back and thinking that things couldn't possibly get worse.  
  
"Hey, what's going on in here?"  
  
Sydney, Jane, and Vaughn all turn their heads to see Weiss heading over toward them, Jack trailing behind him, scowling at Vaughn.  
  
"She's just tired," Sydney explains.  
  
Jack nods at Jane, as if that were an appropriate way to greet an infant. "Sydney, Kendall's ready for you now. I can take you down to the conference room, if you'd like."  
  
"Sure, just let me get Jane's things."  
  
"Hey Syd," says Weiss gently, "why don't you leave her here? We can take care of her while you wrap things up."  
  
"Right," she says, glancing at Vaughn, who's doing his best to ignore her. She sighs, knowing that she's about to make things worse. "Her bottle's in the diaper bag," she tells him, and then she hands Jane over to Weiss.  
  
Jane goes eagerly, without complaint, and Sydney sees the surprise flash across Vaughn's face. When Jane lets out her gurgly baby laugh as Weiss tickles her, the surprise is replaced by anger.  
  
"Sydney, we need to go," Jack tells her, gently taking her arm and guiding her out into the hall.  
  
As she leaves the room, she looks back over her shoulder for one last glimpse of the reunion she's waited so long to see. It's all wrong, though, full of anger and resentment instead of laughter and joy. She wonders if there's any way to make things right, but the stony look on Vaughn's face isn't giving her much in the way of encouragement.  
  
She turns away, straightening her shoulders to face Kendall. She's made her choices. Now she'll just have to figure out a way to live with them.  
  
END.  
  
Feedback gratefully received at emily@healthyinterest.net. Stay tuned to our Matrilineal page () for the companion piece. 


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